Let's talk about genre.
Or type about it.
And you don't have to. That was the royal "let's".
I woke up early this morning with the intention of going to a coffee house for a beverage and some reading. But it's raining, so I've talked myself out of it. Therefore, I feel compelled to write a blog post to make up for it. I'm determined to make this early rising worthwhile. The murdering of Comfy Bed Paul needs some serious justification.
I've been thinking about genre recently. I don't know why. Possibly because of my French friend Jean Ruh, who keeps plaguing me with questions. About genre.
It's interesting that certain genres lack credibility in the mainstream. They're seen as silly and childish and frivolous. There is still a stigma attached so science fiction and fantasy, particularly. It seems to be that when people dismiss an entire genre, they're misunderstanding how genre works.
Some genre fiction does have the status of high art, but this relates to how long they've been around. Classical mythology is fantasy fiction. It's ridiculous: full of melodrama and insane characters behaving in incomprehensible ways. It's also brilliant. But Homer is treated with a reverence that, let's say, Farscape is not.
I've never really seen Farscape. My instinct is that it's probably not as good as the Iliad, but I don't know. The point is that there's nothing more inherently infantile about funny looking aliens than crazy gods turning people into trees.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is taught in schools. Twilight is not. (I'm probably not helping my argument with these examples)
The Western is a respectable genre. People fighting with guns is more valid than people fighting with wands. Heroes wearing capes are childish. Heroes wearing spurs speak to some kind of deeper human understanding.
Superhero fiction is for children because the characters wear tights. Fantasy fiction is for losers because it has elves in it. Science fiction is for nerds because all of the characters have names beginning with 'Z'.
People are able to understand the function of some genres, but dismiss that same function in others.
I'm guilty of it sometimes. I tend to avoid fantasy stories, with orcs and goblins and mythical realms. I find some of those conventions off-putting. But if I think that, I'm missing the point. Fantasy fiction is not about orcs and elves and amulets that can turn you into a wolf god. It's about... more than that.
The dismissing of genre fiction is nothing more than a selective refusal to understand subtext.
Subtext works in all fiction. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man isn't just about how annoying school is. The Brothers Karamazov isn't about family dynamics. Batman isn't about a man dressed as a bat punching people.
I mean, those things are part of it. But you can deal with ideas in a number of ways. Genre is just a tool with which to do this.
Genre is a starting point, not an end point.
(I've started to embolden certain sentences to make it seem like this whole thing is well thought-out, rather than a stream-of-consciousness ramble. Has it worked?)
We realise that with respected genres. A Western isn't just about people with guns and hats shooting each other. It's about man versus nature, or the individual versus society, or the new world versus the old, or gender politics, or racism, or technology, or morality, or religion.
But Star Trek is just stupid men in silly costumes firing lasers at models.
I'm sure this is becoming less true. Lots of people are perfectly comfortable with genre fiction. But there still are some dismissive people out there. You'll be able to recognise them because they're idiots.
That's not to say that there isn't bad genre fiction. But there's bad non-genre fiction too.
As I said, I'm sometimes guilty of dismissing fantasy fiction. But I'm trying not to. I tend to find fantasy writing a bit humourless and stiff. But I like Harry Potter, and that's full of wizards and elves and potions. If it's good, it's good. The genre is just scenery.
There are fantastic characters in genre fiction, and those characters can be interestingly defined and illustrated by using the tools of genre.
If you understand how, say, detective fiction works, you can do a lot with it. It's not just about a detective solving a crime. You can use, undercut, contradict and satirise the conventions of a detective story. And by using that lens, there are an almost infinite number of approaches you can take.
Genre frees you up to deal with issues in a manner beyond the obvious.
Science fiction allows you to literalise abstract ideas. You can spell them out in interesting ways. You can invert reality. You can tackle sensitive subjects by proxy.
The most annoying criticism of fantasy and science fiction is that it's somehow frivolous; that it doesn't deal with the real world. This is, once again, the selective subtext-blindness coming into play. Either that or a chronic lack of imagination.
If you think any story that deals with politics must be set in the 'real' world, with politicians discussing political issues, your world is an incredibly limited one.
Stories about elves and broomsticks that can dance can be far more effective comments on real issues and real people than any 'realistic' drama. I can't think of any right now, but there probably are some.
Sometimes, you can only see the truth by looking at it through a kaleidoscope. That's not technically true, but you can see what I mean.
I've probably been going on about this for too long, fighting straw men. What I'm really trying to get at is: be careful when judging things based on genre. There's more than meets the eye, even if the eye is all fiery and looking at Frodo.
Oh yeah, I remember how I was going to finish this: superhero comics.
I like superhero comics, and they aren't well respected in the mainstream media. It was probably that insensitivity that started me down this road.
What I wanted say was that superhero comics are the best genre.
You might think that's a ridiculous sweeping statement that invalidates my entire argument and haircut. But it's true.
(It might not be true)
The reason for this is that the superhero genre is made up of every other genre in fiction.
You get to have all of your genre-eggs in one basket and eat them too.
Superhero fiction came about as a composite of various other genres. There were originally elements of pulp heroes, detectives, science fiction and fantasy heroes. As times progressed, and the superhero fell in and out of fashion in the late-40s, other forms became popular: horror comics, monster comics, romance comics, war comics.
Some of the best writers and artists plied their trade in these areas, so that when the superheroes re-emerged in the late-50s, a whole glorious genre hodgepodge emerged. Marvel comics like Spider-Man and the Hulk were basically weird 50s monsters converted into heroes.
The fact that most Marvel characters exist in the same fictional universe means that you have traditional superheroes, science fiction characters, aliens, monsters, vampires, characters from (a huge range of) classical mythology, spies, secret agents, wizards, politicians, private detectives, cowboys, newspaper reporters, vigilantes, knights, terrorists, corrupt officials, talking animals, cavemen, corporations, serial killers, bureaucrats, robots, and planets with moustaches, all in the same world.
This means that not only do you have the tools and the scenery of all of those different genres to play with, but that all of those characters can actually interact with each other! You can have a group meeting with a demon, a cowboy, an alien, an FBI agent and a Greek god, all just hanging around drinking coffee.
The superhero genre is the omni-genre.
If you have all of this to play with, and if you take off your subtext-visor, you'll see that there is nothing that can't be tackled with these tools. The entire spectrum of human experience can be explored in an incredible number of different ways.
It's not always like that. I accept it. Sometimes the stories are simplistic. Sometimes a fight between Cigar-Man and the villainous Dr Freud is just a fight between Cigar-Man and the villainous Dr Freud.
But they don't have to be. Fantasy fiction can be Twilight, but it can also be Shakespeare. Naturalistic fiction can The Wire, but it can also be Neighbours.
Superhero stories aren't just for children.
Sometimes they are. But they don't have to be.
I wish some people would stop pretending to misunderstand genre. Citizen Kane would still be a masterpiece if Rosebud was a Klingon.
Possibly. Perhaps.
I'm not good with conclusions.
Unless I
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